Typically, in large companies which may have offices in many locations throughout a country or countries, each office or accounting centre has dedicated employees, systems, equipment and information systems which are used in the process of reimbursing employees for expenses incurred on business trips or the like.
Typically, employees submit a paper copy of an expense report to an employee receivable processing location. Often such paper copies are generated on a computer, using a spreadsheet. Such expense reports are typically reviewed and audited by an employee receivables group, depending upon the dollar amounts of the expense reports. Usually, such expense reports are keyed into a computer by employee receivable staff, for entry into a travel management system. Generally, all expense reports must have a review signature prior to the employee receiving reimbursement. The keying of the expense report by employee receivable staff is a duplication of effort and inefficient. The need for a review signature requires coordination with the person authorized to provide a review and is unnecessary where the expense amounts incurred are relatively small.
Often, different offices will have different levels of modernization. Some may have the capability for direct deposit, while most manually sign cheques, stuff envelopes, sort by location, prepare packages for mailing and distribute cheques in-house by various methods such as by cashiers, volunteers, or inter-office mail. Usually, only a small percentage of such cheques are mailed to an employee's home. Often where a direct deposit is made, a suitable notification is sent to the employee by one of the above methods. In any event, company resources are required to deliver the reimbursement or notification of the reimbursement to the employee.
With the above method of handling an expense report, considerable time passes before the employee receives reimbursement. Yet, where an employee has incurred expenses on behalf of the company on a credit card, the employee is required to make a payment to the credit card issuer before a pre-determined date. Sometimes with existing procedures, the employee may not receive reimbursement before the pre-determined date, which could cause the employee to unnecessarily incur interest charges.
The storage of expense reports and receipts also typically varies from office to office. Often reports and receipts are stored in storage boxes, although some are microfilmed. Nevertheless, there is usually no standard format for storage.
What would be desirable therefore, is a system and procedure for handling expense reports to expedite the act of submitting expenses, to expedite review of expense reports, to expedite payments to employees, to facilitate a common storage regime, and to consolidate resources associated with the processing of expense reports in a single location. The present invention address this need.